Thursday, May 30, 2013

It was a simple act. I inserted the
plastic credit card with the magnetic strip purposely aligned on the top left
into the card reader at my local Shell gas station pump and rapidly withdrew
the card, certain that once again, I would be authorized after typing in my
area code and punching credit. But alas, all I got was a message to see the
attendant inside.

I tried again. Same message.

Not wishing to appear insanely stupid
and knowing that my credit line was impeccable, I trudged inside muttering to
myself about accidentally getting the small magnets on my clip-on sunglasses too
close to the magnetic strip on my credit card. Scientists like me always have
such a ready explanation for unexpected phenomena.

The busy attendant interrupted her
processing of a line of paying customers, all of whom were giving me the evil
eye, and informed me that I should change the speed at which I withdrew the
card from the reader since that often was the problem. She was obviously
processing me as a silly old man who had not joined the credit card generation.

Retreating sheepishly and somewhat
embarrassed to the gas pump, I tried several more times while varying the speed
of insertion and withdrawal. Same message each time. Frustrated beyond measure,
I did the manly thing, got in my car, and drove off for a soothing meal at my
local MacDonalds.

Like all great connoisseurs of
burgerdom, I appreciate the fine distinctions between an old-fashioned
ranch-style burger with mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato and pickle versus the synthetic
Big Mac with its secret sauce. And, of course, there is the Angus burger with
plenty of onion and lots of strong, spicy mustard. Sadly, Texas doesn’t have
those wonderful green chili burgers found in New Mexico.

I choose the Angus burger meal and reached
into my pocket to extract the misbehaving credit card when what to my wandering
eye should appear but the logo on said card. Too my horror and chagrin, it
wasn’t the expected overlapping red and orange circles on my MasterCard, but
the blue logo of my Randal’s grocery card. I was using the wrong card! How
could I have missed the obvious?

Like any typical husband, I wanted to
blame my wife for shuffling my wallet full of plastic cards, but this time I
was stuck with my own malfeasance. The MasterCard was located where I always
keep the grocery card. So much for force of habit!

But let’s be clear about this! Exactly
how many cards do I have? Let’s see. There are two credit cards, a debit card,
two grocery cards – one for Colorado, three hotel chain cards, a restaurant
club card, two airline cards, one international SOS card, a passport
information card, a AAA auto card, a bank card, three business association
cards, two health cards, several government ID cards including a driver’s
license, a couple of retailer cards, an REI membership card, several partially
used Washington Metro cards, a compliance HOTLINE card, and a VIP entry card.
Did I miss one?

Even in retirement, I clearly need one
of those Lifestyle Lifts
compliments of the TV commercials featuring Debbie Boone. The sag under my chin
and all those wrinkles around my eyes were clearly caused by dealing with too
much plastic and the embarrassment of choosing the wrong card.

But do we really have to deal with all
that plastic in the modern electronic-IT age? Actually, NO! Believe it or not,
you can now replace your plastic cards with a cellphone and some wireless
technology. At Verizon, it’s called the ISIS Mobile Wallet. You pay by synching your cellphone at checkout and clicking away.
Hopefully, the bill is achieved through RFID tagging
of the products you want to purchase. While not widely available, it’s clearly
the future. So much for that fistful of plastic!

Even better, you really don’t need to
leave the comfort of your home to shop … and I’m not talking about the standard
web surfing experience. Real shoppers want the feel of being there and the
tactile experience. Enter the 3D graphical user interface attached to a virtual reality headset
complete with electronic gloves and in the future, a sniffer to provide the
olfactory dimension. So much for a static 2D computer screen!

Just image going to your favorite mall
anywhere in the world and entering the store of your choice. The smell and the
atmosphere will be there including the ability to reach out, touch, and pick up
anything of interest to you. Can I still squeeze the bread loaf to check for
freshness? Merchants will go out of their way to insure a quality virtual
experience, coupled with the ability to purchase their products with ease and
have them arrive quickly on your doorstep. You don’t believe me? Such simulated 3D
tours already exist on the Internet.

But what about my craving for a Big Mac
or an Angus burger? Surely that will not be satisfied by a virtual world? I’ll
still have to get into my car, purchase gas with my mobile wallet, and head to
my local MacDonalds. Not so fast! The Star Trek Food Replicator is here … or kind of here.

Let’s refresh our memory on the
production of “food” as a generic item. In the olden days, pioneers stored up
on salt, pepper, flour, cornmeal, sugar, molasses, vinegar, fiber from the
garden, protein from animals and beans, potatoes, and so forth. They used these
primitive ingredients to prepare “food.” The modern food replicator will do –
and does – the same thing. Starting with containers of the basic ingredients,
the proper proportions are injected into a preparation vessel and microwave
cooked as appropriate.

And out pops a Big Mac. Or, at least, it
will “taste” like a Big Mac. With experience, some measure of “texture” and
“smell” will also be achieved. To future generations, it will become the “Big
Mac” experience. If you don’t believe in multiple “Big Mac” experiences, order
a Big Mac in South Korea and see what you get!

Yuk is all I have to say. I like my Big
Mac and I want mustard on my Angus burger. And will I have to tip
electronically the virtual waiter who responds to my voice command on the food
replicator?

Just imagine the TV fare fifty years
from now. You’ll be able to choose between the geek chef cooking competition
for the best replicator recipe or a half-hour show entitled “Replicator Review”
for those desiring haute replicator cuisine. Captain Kirk, what have you done
to us?

So the next time you insert that plastic
credit card into the gas pump, let’s hope you don’t get the message: “see
attendant.” Who knows what will happen to you after that? Just don’t forget to ask
for the mustard!

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Okay. What can I say? I took the plunge compliments of Dan
Brown’s latest novel Inferno and enjoined a modern
version of a medieval crusade during the past week. Like Brown’s iconic sleuth,
Robert Langdon, who exposes evil while in disguise as a Harvard professor of
symbolism, I raced from clue to clue using my Safari browser sans, of course,
one of Langdon’s ever present and enigmatic female companions. My quest? To
save myself from the ennui of retirement in the hope of enlightenment about the
fate of humankind.

And you wondered what happened to my last week’s blog!

I won’t spoil the fun for those of you yet to experience the
formulaic misadventures of Professor Langdon – that dude is one lucky stiff –
but suffice it to say that his latest encounter with death and the powers that
be involves the oldest and most sinister of all villains … ourselves!

Just in case you haven’t been paying attention to the latest
news that isn’t new news, humankind is heading at an exponentially accelerating
pace towards a mass extinction event that will make the Black Death or plague
of the Middle Ages seem tame by comparison. At least, that’s what the bearded
fellow wearing a tutu with “The End is
Near!” placard about his neck likes to tell me as I walk past him during my
morning constitutional.

Is all of this talk of doomsday mere hyperbole set to capture
our attention for someone’s fifteen minutes of fame? Or is it another
conspiracy theory hatched by those who would keep us distracted from matters
that really count? And exactly what is the nature of the latest incarnation of
our impending doom?

I nervously began my quest for the truth by carefully typing
the word “transhumanism” into a Google search form and awaiting a return
response, certain that my computer was about to crash. To my surprise, I only
got Wikipedia instead of the government hacking into my computer while causing
the screen to flash in brilliant red letters, ACCESS
DENIED! That seems to only happen at NCIS.

But wait! What about the blue symbol that popped up on the
Wiki page? Surely “h+” must mean something! Are THEY trying to tell me that the
hydrogen ion is the source of our future destruction? Nope. Wrong
interpretation of the symbol.

Transhumanism has been with us for a long time and takes
many forms. Quoting from Wikipedia,
it “is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the
possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition
by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human
intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.” Now that’s a mouthful to
ingest in one gulp! And believe me, you’ll need lots of time to fully digest
the transhumanist primer at Wikipedia.

For many, transhumanism is an alarm bell sounding out the
demise of the human condition as we’ve always known it. For others, it signals
the coming transformation of humankind into a new “posthuman” or “human plus”
(the meaning of the h+ symbol) era. But for our quest, it represents the very
existence of humankind versus our ability to destroy ourselves through an
exploding global population and the consequences that result therefrom such as
global warming and the accelerating depletion of our natural resources.

Folks, by any stretch of the imagination, such growth is not
sustainable and humankind is now exponentially approaching the tipping point,
or perhaps better said, the breaking point. Will we destroy ourselves through
the normal processes of war or a pandemic, or will we accidentally invent our
own poison? Or will the posthuman transformation occur first thereby saving
posthumanity? And what form might posthumanity take?

I personally like to divide “posthumanity” into three
classes:

Super-humans

The Borg

Cylons

Super-humans are those beings produced by directed evolution
through genetic and chemical manipulation. They will be stronger, more
intelligent, disease resistant, and have a host of other positive attributes –
although unintended consequences will also emerge. To the surprise of most
people, we’ve long since begun this transformation by popping pills into our
mouth on a daily basis and by dumping the excess into our natural environment.
But in the end, super-humans will still be a biological construct, trapped in
an inherently “wet-ware” machine and directed evolution takes a long, long time
to occur.

We can fix the “wet-ware” condition by becoming “The Borg”
from Star Trek. In this version of the posthuman, we
integrate “wet-ware” with software and hardware. Again, this transformation is
already occurring at an accelerating pace, but there is a proverbial science
fiction fly in the soup. The “sentient being” at the core of the Borg being is
still basically residing in a “wet-ware” brain, an inherently slow and
cumbersome construct for which the symbol for the hydrogen ion seems
appropriate.

But our quest isn’t over! As the electric power grid once
again flickers into a brownout condition due to the Texas heat and over
consumption by too many air conditioners, I hastily scroll my Magic Mouse to
find the answer. It’s the Cylons!

Cylons à la Battlestar
Gallactica are self-aware, sentient computers housed in an autonomous
robotic body that they control. They are the next step up the evolutionary
ladder. Once they emerge – and I’m certain that they will before the
Twenty-first century is over, they will exponentially blow past normal humans,
super-humans, or the Borg. They are our future!

Will cylons arrive on the scene before the social and
destructive meltdown from overpopulation? Being infinitely and rapidly
adaptable, they will likely survive almost any condition thrown at them by
Mother Nature or the stupidity of humankind. And therein lies the hidden truth
not revealed in Brown’s Inferno. It
won’t be humans who emerge from Dante’s Hell, even if we curb the growth of the
global population.

And so as darkness descends on the era of humankind, we
reach the end of our quest and stare into the red eye of a cylon as it pulsates
back and forth while hearing the final benediction from the infamous mechanical
voice: “By your leave!”

Thursday, May 9, 2013

The latest marketing jingle from Kentucky Fried Chicken
unwittingly expresses a condition now becoming all too well known to Americans.
Under the dual rubrics of “balancing the budget” and “reducing the deficit,” right-wing,
self-proclaimed conservative politicians continue to push for the now
discredited austerity budgeting measures that have failed so miserably in
Europe and are deprecated by almost all economists.

Their strategy is simple. Ignore the facts. Obstruct all
progressive legislation. Engage in a massive and organized campaign of
sloganeering and disinformation. Filibuster. Introduce and vote for absolutely
worthless and stupid bills. Trash talk any and all initiatives supported by
President Obama, no matter their source. Divert attention from the real issues
facing America by creating phony and trumped up sideshows. And demagogue issues
that play to the heart of the extreme right wing who now form the presumed base
of the Republican Party. In short, just say NO!

The litany of these actions and their outcomes has grown
into a cancer metastasizing all across our nation.

Take, for example, the small community of Buena Vista,
Michigan. This week, the school
district laid off all the teachers and closed down the schools. The
children will not finish out the school year because the district ran out of
money and the state is balking at further infusions of cash. How ridiculous is
this? Where is the adult leadership? I’ll tell you where. They are busy
pandering to their political base instead of solving the problem. Buena Vista
is but a microcosm of what is happening everywhere and at all levels.

I’m especially impressed by the vote
on Wednesday in the House of Representatives regarding overtime pay,
namely, the notion that an employee should have the ability to defer overtime
pay in preference for paid time off at a later date. As anyone who has ever
supervised people in a business knows, this would be a major loophole ripe for
plundering by management. Employees will be pressured to put in the overtime
and somehow that promised “time off” will never appear. I should know. I’ve
lost many a “comp hour” to this game.

The tragic story which unfolded this week in Cleveland
reveals yet another dimension of the austerity mindset. As camera crews and
reporters searched for and interviewed anyone willing to add their bit of
trivia, parents and relatives of other missing children and young adults
requested that their stories be broadcast in the hope of another miracle.
Unbelievably in America, something like 100,000 such miracles are needed! So, exactly
what resources are we providing to law enforcement to empower them to close
this astonishing gap?

Sadly, the Cleveland story also revealed another aspect of
life as we now experience it in America. Did you by chance notice the teeth of
many of those people interviewed by CNN in their coverage? You would think that
most of the people inhabited a third-world country given the condition of their
dentures or lack thereof. How is it in America that so many people have come to
such a condition?

And then we have the madness known as sequestration –
unless, of course, one happens to be a congressman in need of a reliable flight
back home to woo constituents and convince them that you really are taking care
of the nation’s business. I’ve previously
described the effect that sequestration, or “secastration” as I call it,
will have on our innovation ecosystem, but I’m compelled to reiterate that
plight.

Every scientist or engineer who has ever participated in
proposal review in Washington, whether at the National Science Foundation or
any other federal agency, knows that roughly a third or more of all research
proposals are excellent with nothing to distinguish one from another other than
possibly the identity of the organization and geographic location of the
proposer or possibly the chosen funding initiatives of the agency. But in the
world of secastration, only about one out of ten proposals will be funded.
Folks, that’s not going to get the job done when it comes to keeping America
competitive. We are dooming an entire generation of young STEM researchers who
don’t have some form of tenure or stable support to a wasteland where even the
bones are consumed.

And with a “Hi-Yo Silver, Away,” a masked man from Texas rides
into Washington to save the day. Only this masked man doesn’t wear a white hat.
His name: Congressman Lamar Smith, chairperson of the House Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology – a committee that I had an opportunity to testify before in 2005. I
once met Smith a decade ago at Texas Instruments and talked with him about
nanotechnology and the future of technology commercialization. He’s an amiable
person and looks the part of the Lone Ranger.

But behind that façade of being on your side, he’s just as
screwed up as the rest of his counterparts on the GOP side of the science
committee. He wants to politicize scientific research and the funding thereof
by pushing forward a bill entitled the High Quality Research Act to require
oversight of the scientific research process. He has even demanded that the NSF
justify to his committee certain funded projects that were approved by panels
of independent scientists. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, also from
Texas and the ranking Democrat on the committee, immediately fired back a
blistering letter rebuking Smith. Details of the proposed legislation and
Johnson’s response are available at the Huffington
Post. As one of my friends described it, Smith is attempting to lead
America on “a race to the bottom.”

And then we have an example of one of the true nut jobs,
otherwise known as James Porter, the new President of the NRA. As a confirmed
genealogist and student of the South, I know all about the “war of northern
aggression” versus “the war between the states.” Despite politically correct
protestations from revisionist historians, the phrase “war of northern
aggression” is an apt characterization of how Southerners viewed and named the
American Civil War – the best title for that event. But going down the rat hole
of debating such points is not what Porter’s comments were about. This is a man
who believes that armed rebellion against THEM, presumably those of us who
support the federal government and its three branches as created by the
Constitution, is a likely event. What nonsense! And it all has to do with guns
and the second amendment.

I believe in and support the second amendment, but I also
believe in domestic tranquility through gun safety. There is no reason for
individual Americans to own or possess guns or weapons capable of rapid fire
with an essentially unlimited supply of bullets, although the exact limits on
that can and should be debated. Furthermore, background checks are an essential
part of gun safety. I personally support the registration of guns, but that’s
not likely to happen. Think about it! I have to get a driver’s license to
operate an automobile and I have to register my car and transfer the title when
I sell it. These requirements and the attendant bureaucracy don’t stop me from
owning or operating multiple cars. The same will be true for proper gun safety
regulation.

I could go on describing and documenting the cancer that is
spreading in America. How about the diversionary tactic of the Benghazi blame
game? Or how about the senators from Oklahoma who are stoking the right-wing
flames by claiming that “Obama’s” Department of Homeland Security is buying
up ammunition to defeat the second amendment? Do they really want to turn
on another Timothy McVeigh?

I have a message for moderate Americans. Stop whining about
all this. Stop whispering that maybe Obama should drink beer with the nut jobs
or maybe that he’s not getting the job done. Embrace the real F-word: fact, not
fiction! Get out the vote, stand up for middle America, and remove from office using
the ballot box those who espouse the nonsense. If you don’t, they’ll be licking
their chops while burping “I ate the bones!”

About Me

Keith McDowell is a scientist and research administrator widely known for his research in theoretical chemical physics on quantum dissipative systems and for his leadership as the vice chancellor for research and technology transfer at The University of Texas System as well as vice president for research at The University of Texas at Arlington and The University of Alabama. Dr. McDowell is a graduate of Wake Forest University and Harvard University. An Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and awardee of the University of Texas Chancellor's Award for Teaching, Dr. McDowell is currently a retired professor of chemistry from The University of Texas at Arlington residing in Austin, Texas. Keith is an expert genealogist with several books and manuscripts to his credit (www.mcdowellgenealogy.com) and an avid mountaineer with over 500 ascents spanning forty years.

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